Book Club Abu Dhabi style

Posted on March 13, 2011 by helena

I flew back here yesterday and almost immediately had to go to a meeting of my book club, not the one I created, but one I was asked to join just a week ago.

The book under discussion was We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver. This is a book that had sold over one million copies, been translated into just about every language you’ve ever heard of and is about to become a film starring Tilda Swinton.

There were two key differences between this meeting and most other book club meetings; one it was at a palace and two, the author was there. Lionel Shriver herself showed up and talked to us about her life, her books, the writing process and much more for over an hour. Amazing.

She seemed really nice; very expressive and fun, and clever (as you would expect). I was longing to ask her all kinds of detailed questions about writing, plotting, character and so forth. I remember being in such awe when I read ‘Kevin’ and thinking I will never be able to write a book like that. She did say she had the whole plot worked out before she began. I was still deciding the ending of my book when I wrote it.

London was great; I was on TV (The Vanessa Show, March 11th, if anyone can be bothered to do so, please upload it to Youtube so my poor deprived children can watch it, we can’t access it from here), lots of radio shows and today there was a gossip piece in the Independent on Sunday today. The book had sold out at Waterstone’s on the King’s Road the second day I was there which was very exciting. We will know latest sales figures tomorrow.

It was great to see everyone and London was sunny – which is probably even more unusual than a best-selling author showing up at your book club.

Going, going, gone…..

Posted on March 3, 2011 by helena

Because I use this blog in part as a diary, I am going to post a speech my deputy made today and show you the glorious cake the magazine team had made for me. I just don’t want you to think I am trying to show off. But it was too lovely a gesture not to keep…obviously I cried.

Here is the cake

Here is Rick’s Speech:
Helena, you wear us out.

You are a whirlwind.

We don’t know how you do it.

You’re a wife, a mother … a tennis player, a yoga practitioner … a
beauty spy, a trier and a tester … a fashion and style icon with
your signature leopard print and pink … a writer, a ghostwriter, an
editor …

We don’t know when you sleep.

Your unflagging energy and tireless commitment to excellence inspire,
ennoble, charm, delight … and only occasionally infuriate us.

We congratulate and celebrate with you on the publication of your
latest novel — and we tell you that our relationship with you is one
of:

Love in a Warm Climate.

Here I am with the cake:

And this is what is left of it now….

Let’s hope book stocks are depleted as fast…yum.

Read all about it…….

Posted on February 14, 2011 by helena

From today’s Daily Mail….I am a novelist! Finally!

Novelist Helena Frith Powell writes, in her latest work, Love In A Warm Climate: ‘Johnny was tall, about six-foot-two, and well-built.

But he had the most delicate hands, like a pianist’s – small with elegant fingers. Sometimes I had to stop myself looking at them and wondering what they would feel like over my body…’

A friend of Miss Frith Powell confides: ‘Johnny is based on the chef Marco Pierre White, whom she knew when they were teenagers. There was no impropriety.’

Be that as it may, I notice the launch party is at Marco Pierre White’s on March 10.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1357094/EPHRAIM-HARDCASTLE-Are-David-Davids-Tory-ambitions-rising.html#ixzz1E072zBwz

PLEASE BUY THIS BOOK!

Posted on February 9, 2011 by helena

Love in a Warm Climate is out now, available in the 3 for 2 at both Waterstone’s and Smith’s. I urge you to buy it please, not only to see which character you think is based on whom (!) but to ensure I can afford to keep Leo in football boots, Olivia in laptops, Bea in chocolate biscuits and, most importantly, myself in matching underwear….

99 and counting

Posted on May 3, 2009 by helena

OK so not that I have been OBSESSIVELY checking my amazon rating but I just want to say, for the record, in case this is as good as it gets that I am 99. And here is the proof: cut and pasted just seconds ago:

Product details

Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Harper (30 April 2009)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0007289545
ISBN-13: 978-0007289547
Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 99 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

I am now going to get back to work. I promise not to look again until tomorrow. And if it’s got worse I can just look at my blog and remember my glory days…….

The sound of sneezing

Posted on March 17, 2009 by helena

So, it gets worse. Yesterday I woke up practically unable to breathe without my nose running. By 9am I had used a whole box of tissues. At 12pm I was due at an event at the Swiss Ambassador’s residence organised by his wife.

“I love all your books,” she said. “It would be such fun if you could pop along.”

Never one to let my readers down I heave myself off my sick bed and drive to her, very posh and large, residence. I know I have arrived as the speed bump outside the villa is painted red and white. I walk up to the front door and open it expecting everyone to be out in the garden or elsewhere. I walk into a room with perhaps 40 wives of ambassadors listening to a talk which, it immediately becomes apparent as the Swiss ambassador’s wife manouvers me and my box of tissues towards a chair centre-stage, I am meant to be part of.

I see To Hell in High Heels prominently displayed. I wonder if Two Lipsticks is there and frantically try to remember if I wrote anything about how a French woman would cope with a constantly running nose and Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer look.

“I would like to introduce the famous English journalist and writer, Helena Frith Powell,” says Yael from the Clinique La Prairie who is leading the presentation and looking totally perfect in a little black dress and delicate heels. I sneeze. The Ambassadors’ wives look unimpressed. I don’t think my appearance did much for book sales.

To Hell in High Heels

Posted on April 11, 2008 by helena

It really was to hell in high heels when I finally left the launch party wearing my gorgeous red snakeskin Fratelli Rossetti stilettos. After three days of tottering around London in high heels there is not a part of my feet that doesn’t hurt. But it was all worth it.

Yesterday was pretty perfect. It started with TV, then went on to shopping, a massage and a sleep, and ended with a lovely party. Actually it ended for me after the party when I went to BBC London to talk about the book. Then back to the most comfortable bed in town at The Berkeley Hotel.

I am now on the Eurostar heading back home, pondering the high and lowlights of the trip. Highlights are: Getting to the giddy heights of number 21 in the Amazon ratings with To Hell; meeting a woman who interviewed George Clooney (and since you ask, yes, he was everything you could possibly hope, dream and wish for and more); The suite at the Berkeley Hotel with everything you could ever want in a room, including a TV you can watch from the bath and wardrobes that light up as you walk towards them; wandering around London in the sunshine (yes, it was sunny for FOUR days, I bet that hasn’t happened since about 1856); stumbling across a sample sale where I found a fuschia pink leather jacket (can you imagine the joy?); seeing so many lovely friends at the party and having Rupert with me for once.

Lowlights; the red sofa on BBC Breakfast clashing horribly with my jumper (you can guess what colour it is); getting stuck in a size 8 dress at H&M and wondering if I would have to call the fire brigade (but as Rina my publicist said “We’ve all been there honey.”); not sleeping (no change there, the international conspiracy continues); getting my high heels repeatedly caught in cracks in the pavement; leaving Knightsbridge this morning and wondering when I’ll be back.

But a highlight will be seeing the babies, Max and Wolfie.

Pre-requisites for a best-seller

Posted on April 7, 2008 by helena

I am doomed to failure. According to an article in this week’s Economist, to write a best-seller you need to be 30, on TV and writing about sex. The biggest selling book in Germany at the moment is apparently all about female fantasies and written by a TV presenter.

This is not news to me. When I saw the head of book serialisation at the Sunday Times at the Christmas party in December he suggested I might like to emulate Petite Anglaise and write about being in love, pregnant and unmarried in France. I pointed out that this could prove tricky as I am almost over the age when anyone sane has children, and married with three of them.

My female fantasy Today while I was in Paris I had tea with Michael Booth, a writing friend of mine who has just written a very funny book about cooking called Sacre Cordon Bleu. As I was on my way to London for a publicity tour for To Hell in High Heels we discussed how one sells books and agreed that TV is the way forward. So I am on the Eurostar, heading for London armed with ideas for TV shows featuring moi. Now all I need is to turn 30 again and think about something do write about linked to sex.

I think the former may be easier than the latter. I can’t think of a single female fantasy, let alone enough for a whole book.

My publicity tour is not going well. So far I have an interview with BBC Radio Lancaster and, er, that’s it. But I am having my teeth whitened and my eyebrows threaded at Harvey Nicks and going to spend a lot of time I should be doing interviews exploring the underwear at M&S. So when I finally do make it onto telly I will look suitably glam.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

Please buy this book….

Posted on April 3, 2008 by helena

Bursting

Today is the publication date of To Hell in High Heels. When my first book came out I was close to bursting with excitement by the time it came out. I counted the days, rather like a child counts the days to his birthday. The same went for the second and the third.

But what I have found with books is that, rather like birthdays, you get all excited about them, but nothing actually changes.

Today will pass much like any other day. Leo will wake up soon and start bossing me about. I will take the children to school where my friend Mary and I will discuss how badly we slept, whether Madonna should be wearing latex underwear aged 50 and grumble about the weather. I will come home and work. Then I will collect the children for lunch, listen to their stories from school, take them back to school and so on. Today will pass just like any other normal school and work day.

Unless of course you ALL go out and buy the book. In which case I may be famous by this time tomorrow. In fact you don’t even have to go out. You can order it from amazon. I am going to have my hair done after the school run just in case.

So Chic and yet so invisible….

Posted on March 18, 2008 by helena

Yesterday my book about French women Two Lipsticks and a Lover came out in France. Here it is called So Chic! and they have translated the UK title and made it a sub-title. Some of you may remember the scary meeting I had with the foremost book publicist in Paris who told me if I didn’t improve my French this week of interviews would be a disaster.

I kept my side of the bargain. Every day I called my long-suffering friend Jacques and spoke to him in French for around 15 minutes. My husband had to leave the house while this was going on. “I’m pleased you’re doing it,” he would say, heading for the door. “I just don’t want to hear it.”

I read Elle, Marie-Claire, Paris-Match; I watched French television. Even my neighbour noticed my French has got better. I imagined wafting around Paris this week, my publicity team in tow, gracing various TV channels with interviews and using the subjunctive like normal mortals use the present tense.

I am not at all chuffed to report that rather than Paris I am in my armchair with Max the cat sitting on my keyboard while Olivia (off sick from school) coughs next to me. To cheer myself up I look at amazon.fr to catch a glimpse of my newly-published book. It is very exciting to be published in the same language as Flaubert and Proust. Granted their books were a lot longer and possibly less superficial than mine, although I’m sure if Flaubert had got on to matching underwear he’d have written about it.

On amazon.fr there is no cover image of my book and my rating is far, far worse than To Hell in High Heels on amazon.co.uk which isn’t even published yet.

The French public is clearly not interested in my opinion of French women. Apart from one lone presenter that is who has a show on the radio statrion France Inter called 5/7. He interviewed me for his show and promised me a 10-minute slot. I though the name was rather promising, cinq a sept and all that. Until he told me it in fact goes out between five and seven in the morning.

So good work Madame Publicist – I am big among French lorry drivers…..